1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to radiotherapy, and in particular to methods for estimating internal target position for use by systems able to continuously align a radiation beam with the target.
2. Background Description
Real-time internal target position estimation is of high interest in radiotherapy, particularly with the recent development of robotic, linear accelerator, DMLC and couch-based systems which can continuously align the radiation beam with the target. It would make an important contribution to effective use of these systems to develop an algorithm to combine x-ray and external respiratory monitoring sources for estimating real-time target position. Currently, there is no system in radiotherapy to estimate internal position from a single x-ray imager and an optical system. What is needed is a methodology for combining x-ray and external respiratory sources for estimating real-time target position.